Dyckman Ware Vermilye

Vermilye—Dyckman Ware Vermilye, 94, on March 25, 2017, at Taos Retirement Village in Taos, N.M., following complications from a fall. Dyck was born on July 8, 1922, to Alice Louise Love and Joseph Ware Vermilye and grew up in Staten Island, N.Y. Upon graduation from the College of William and Mary, in World War II he joined the U.S. Army and served as an officer in the Pacific theatre in non-combat administrative roles. He married William and Mary classmate Sara Jane Snyder in 1944. After the war he earned a master’s from the University of Minnesota and a doctorate from Columbia University, both in education, and joined the administration of the University of Florida in 1950. He became a Quaker in the early 1950s. He was dean of men at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla., in 1957–64; associate provost at Washington University in St. Louis in 1964–66; associate executive director of the American Personnel and Guidance Association in Washington, D.C., in 1966–68; and executive director of the American Association for Higher Education beginning in 1968.

He and Sara Jane divorced in 1980. Leaving the academic and association world behind, in a spiritual quest he spent time at Pendle Hill, the Quaker study and retreat center in Wallingford, Pa., and traveled in 1980 to Harare, Zimbabwe, to practice his conviction that meaningful presence can make a difference. In the aftermath of the Rhodesian Bush War (Zimbabwe War of Liberation), he counseled white Rhodesians who had lost the war and supported the Jesuit Mission at Silveira House in the transformation and empowerment of the black Zimbabweans.

Returning to Pendle Hill as dean in 1983, he met and married Avis Crowe. In time they felt called to go to South Africa, where they lived for two years. They were welcomed into Cape Western Meeting in Cape Town and volunteered where needed in several capacities, writing about their experience. When they returned to the United States, they lived in Corrales, N.M., and Taos, N.M.

Dyck is survived by his wife of 33 years, Avis Crowe Vermilye; four children; eight grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and many close friends in the Taos community.